I'm going into a little bit of a preamble here. Our gentleman here has to have a little bit more time before we start our meeting on copyright.
Again, I must thank my nominator, Scott Simms, for nominating me as chair. It's a tremendous honour for me to be the chair of the heritage committee. I'm sorry I didn't quite reciprocate in the way that I should have maybe with a nomination, but I am very pleased, again, to chair this committee, which we seem to have gotten along so well with.
There are a couple of things we are going to do today. We will carry on our meeting with the officials who will be here today until 5 o'clock. At 5 o'clock we'll switch into a little other business we have to do. We have some scheduling we should look at, or that at least everyone should have to peruse.
In regard to the next meeting, it goes back to some of the suggestions that were made at our last meeting about where we wanted to go as a committee.
Also today I'll be reporting a draft schedule of meetings for October, and I'll be outlining a museum study to be presented to members, as well as an operational budget proposal for a railroad museum study, and this is with the expenses. I think Mr. Scarpaleggia has made a request that a railroad museum from his area might want to come here, and I know Mr. Abbott has suggested a railroad museum from his area.
I have a couple of other things to put forward when we get into museums. It may be that each one of us could think of a small museum in our riding that we might ask to come as a witness. Then we would all know where we're coming from around this table. I think if there's a museum in your riding that could come, that would maybe represent something we might want to do. It's something to think about. Maybe down the way we could invite some of those people here when we come to discussing small museums.
Again, I have one announcement, and I'm going to make it now, regarding our meeting on Wednesday with CBC Radio-Canada. It's been requested by the CBC that the meeting be extended by 30 minutes. So I'm proposing that the meeting would run from 3:30 p.m. until 6 p.m. I don't know whether I can stay for the whole time. If I can't, I might have to ask one of my vice-chairs to chair the final part of the meeting.
That gives you a little bit of insight into where we're headed. I was going to bring some of these things up a little bit later, but we're going to talk about some of them from 5 o'clock until 5:30 p.m., to see where this committee will be going in the next little while. We do have estimates. We do have some of the those things that we can talk about at that time.
That said, I think I've taken up the time I had to take up.
Again, welcome to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, meeting 11, it says, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a briefing on copyright.
Our witnesses I invite to the table are from the Department of Canadian Heritage and from the Department of Industry. Take your positions, please.